After a week off due to a short turnaround between the PSU and Minnesota series, as well as your author being flooded with end of semester schoolwork, Hockey Weekly returns for this week's column. Unfortunately, there isn't much good news to talk about. For the fourth time in four seasons under Mel Pearson, Michigan enters the Christmas break with a bitter taste in their mouths. This year it's a 3 game losing streak and a skid that has left Michigan 1-5 in their last six games after the blazing 4-0 start. Last week they lost two games by a combined 7-1 score at home. They didn't have a full roster sure, but it wasn't pretty. What does it all mean? Here are my thoughts at the moment:

A Season of Segments

This has been an odd year for more reasons than just COVID, because there isn't really a coherent narrative week to week. Michigan came out roaring through the gates to begin the season, then mostly backed it up in Madison. After that they played an even series with nasty Notre Dame and got the short end of the stick both nights. Then they played 1.33 coherent games against PSU before the wheels came off in the final 0.66 of that series. And then without all of their offensive firepower against Minnesota due to the Team USA WJC camp, Michigan was blown off the ice. Each series has been a little bit different and it's hard to get a feel for the team when it's so Jekyl-and-Hyde right now. At some points in this season they've looked like a worldbeater and a favorite for the National Championship. At other points they've looked like a disorganized, playground hockey team that doesn't belong in the tourney. Will the real Michigan Hockey please stand up?

[AFTER THE JUMP: Breaking down where the train went off the tracks]

A Defensive Meltdown

This has been all too common of an image recently [Patrick Barron]

Through the first seven games of the 2020-21 season, Michigan Hockey allowed 10 goals. How much of that was team defense and how much was Strauss Mann's brilliance is up to you, but the Wolverines were strong defensively up until a little bit ago. They then allowed sixteen goals in the next three games, with Mann being pulled twice in the process. For the record, he was not pulled either time because he was a culprit; rather it was the ole' Patrick Roy Montreal Canadiens Memorial Pull the Goalie for Psychological Reasons So He Doesn't Get Humiliated situation. Any way you slice it, the last three games were a catastrophic defensive meltdown in every facet of the hockey game: team defense, system defense, individual defense, and the penalty kill. Michigan only scoring once against an excellent defensive Minnesota team when four of their top six or so forwards were out of the lineup was an unfortunately acceptable result. Putting up the same resistance to the opposing offense as a Rich Rodriguez Michigan defense is not. Only Cam York was missing for the Gopher series, and it's not exactly like York is a Nick Lidstrom or Rod Langway caliber defensive defenseman. What happened against Minnesota was extremely disappointing.

It's hard to really place blame on any one area, because the levee just broke. Take the second PSU game, where Michigan gave up two early goals but had steadied themselves into the second period. That night it was the PK that did the Wolverines in, ceding a few PP goals and from there it was, to quote the outrageously excited BTN+ PxP announcer "an AVALANCHE OF GOALS". Before you could blink, PSU had scored 5 times in about 15 minutes. Michigan's penalty kill struggles to obstruct passing angles, and a skilled offensive team like Penn State and Minnesota had no problem carving up the Wolverines like a Christmas ham. They need to improve in that facet of the game, period. But then there's just a continuous run of boneheaded plays. Take this Minnesota goal from game 2:

They didn't call him Mr. Hockey for nothing. pic.twitter.com/zIdtUl1ASR

— Minnesota Men’s Hockey (@GopherHockey) December 9, 2020

Kent Johnson can't go back into the corner with that play. Likewise Jacob Truscott's effort to stop the play could be generously described as "poor", and the other forwards don't do much to help either. There are way too many individual breakdowns happening right now and the team just looks spooked in their own end. It would also help if stuff like this stopped happening:

Mike Koster's first collegiate goal caused a goaltender change.

We're so proud :') pic.twitter.com/3xUxzqNtDg

— Minnesota Men’s Hockey (@GopherHockey) December 10, 2020

That's a beautiful centering pass by Keaton Pehrson, it just happened to go to a Minnesota dude in front of his own net. Mel and the rest of the coaching staff have a long way to go right now. Getting the team back to the basics and plugging some of the holes that have sprung open recently would be a good start. They need to be fixed, and fast.

Seasonal Deja Vu?

Michigan Hockey under Mel Pearson has followed a familiar pattern: the term starts strong the first couple series, then they get nuked for like a month and go into the holiday break begging for the sweet release of death. And then when the new year hits it's gangbusters the rest of the way. If the first part of that sounds like what's happening now, it's because it is. Here's Mel's record by month through his Michigan tenure, entering this season:

10-6-1 October
6-15-4 November
4-4-4 December
12-8-1 January
13-6-3 February
6-5 March
0-1 April

This season is a bit different schedule-wise, but if we're comparing it to the past, the same pattern emerges. The first two/three series of this year would've been the October portion of the schedule in a normal season and what we just experienced would be the November portion. So here we are again. I don't know why Mel's teams get bombed early in the season, but not at the very beginning, but it's extremely frustrating. The good news for this team is that they're only 5-5 at the break and not 6-10-2 like last year. If there's one big reason for optimism with this team it's those January/February records. Mel has shown exceptional ability to improve his teams as the year goes along. He needs to do that again this year, especially on the defensive side.

Stay out of the penalty box, please

Less of this please [Patrick Barron]

Michigan has taken 43 penalties through ten games, but the problem has really reared its head as of late. Of course, any penalty taken is bad news when your PK is struggling as much as Michigan's is, but the penalty imbalance especially has been alarming. The Maize & Blue have drawn few penalties and committed a whole bunch, which has snowballed into goals with the PK issues. Most infuriating though is the types of penalties they're taking. Of those 43, just 9 have been taken by a defenseman. Generally speaking if a defender takes a penalty, it's to prevent a goal or a high danger chance in their own end. When a forward takes one, it could be that kind, but there's also a higher chance it's a dumb neutral zone or offensive zone penalty. There's been a ton of those for Michigan. Five penalties taken by Brisson and Lambert is distressing, as is the four too-many-men penalties, which are charged to the team as a whole. Two of those came in a single game against Minnesota last week. Part of the penalty issues may be the youth of the team, but they're going to need to play cleaner in the second half of the season.

The B1G: Minnesota and Everyone Else

At this juncture of the season the B1G is Minnesota's conference to lose. I say that referring to team quality, not necessarily standings. Based on the current standings, Wisconsin also has an edge on every other team below Minnesota, but I don't see them in their own tier. Minnesota is on a plane by itself right now, and all the other teams are beneath them. The Gophers are experienced, terrifically coached, and are just firing on all cylinders at the moment, at 8-0 on the season. Their goal differential is +19 through 8 games and they're allowing just a single goal per game. Old Friend Jack LaFontaine is playing great in net and he doesn't face many high quality shots because their defense is a fortress. They don't take penalties and they have yet to give up a PPG in the few power plays they've allowed. Oh and the Gophers can score too, with a balanced offense including Sammy Walker, Scott Reedy, Sampo Ranta, Blake McLaughlin, and Ben Meyers, among others.

Michigan is still my guess as the team most likely to get to Minnesota's level at some point based on talent, but they're not close yet. Everyone else is in the mix. PSU has finally awoken with three straight wins, Notre Dame is Notre Dame, and OSU is not a bad team, while Wisconsin has played great in the conference (got swept by ASU out of conference). The B1G remains really tough and as I've said previously, there is no easy win in this conference. That remains true now as ever, and with the presence of Minnesota the conference now has an elite team.

Overall Thoughts on the Season at the 1/3 juncture

If you had told me on November 5 that Michigan would be 5-5 through the first 10 games, I would frankly have not been that disappointed. This roster had a lot of turnover in the offseason and has a lot of fresh faces. A slowish start is not that unpredictable. The manner in which it has unfolded has been extremely demoralizing, however. Michigan played their best series opening weekend and each week since they have regressed further. One thing seemed apparent during the Minnesota series last week: this team needs some time off to regroup and look in the mirror. The offensive production has been perhaps a bit lower than I expected but again, we just came off of a series where the big guns were missing. Defensively, they were better than expected the first 7 games and far worse than expected the last 3 games. Hopefully there's a more realistic equilibrium somewhere in between.

Again, the real question is how much better this team can get. I think the answer is quite substantially. This is still an extremely young and extremely talented squad and if Mel can make some fixes like he did in previous years, this is a team with a lot of potential to make a run. But there isn't time to dillydally. Coming out of the break strong is imperative, because every B1G weekend is a battle and Michigan doesn't have time to waste when it comes to the standings. They can finish as high as second or third, but also as low as seventh. It's a competitive league and what this team looks like in January is all that matters now.